100 million people will watch the presidential debate 2016
Twitter and Facebook have officially started a head-on race to get the highest amount of viewers on their platforms on the next presidential debate. Both of them will live-stream the discussions on their video platforms.
The presidential debate is scheduled for next Monday, and it is going to take place at the Hofstra University located in Hempstead, New York state. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will discuss their projects alongside their selected vice-presidents Time Kaine and Mike Pence respectively.
ABC as well as Comcast expect the number of viewers for Monday’s debate will be close to the 100 million which highlights the power of social media to draw people’s attention.
Watching important events on social media platforms is different. People not only get to see what’s happening, but they also get to share their opinion with millions of users in real time. It will be a good measure to see how the candidates will fare in the upcoming elections.
Twiter and Bloomberg Vs. Facebook and ABC
The social media phenomenon has changed the way news are delivered around the world. Currently, 80% of the adult population prefers online news over regularly printed newspapers, and almost two-thirds of them use social media to access news reports.
This fact has not been overseen by Twitter, who has forged an alliance with Bloomberg to create a live feed account to cover the presidential debate. Twitter will give five priority to Bloomberg journalists’ feed on the topic.
Facebook has also made plans to get their online streaming in partnership with ABC. The company will create a special feed for viewers to share comments while they watch the debate live. The coverage will be accompanied by the reports of ABC journalists attending the event.
Thanks to the Facebook Live service, Mark Zuckerberg has managed to get 1.7 billion viewers on different Facebook’s channels, he hopes this presidential debate will give another bump to the platform.
The impact of social platform in news media
Mark Grabowski has been following the social media phenomena and its interaction with politics nowadays. Mark mentions that this could create a new way of enjoying political events from now on and will potentially set a new trend for journalism.
“No longer is the media setting the agenda, but, rather, media consumers are,” said Mark Grabowski, an associate professor at Adelphi University.
Sources: CS Monitor
